Certain smells bring me back to places in my childhood that I love to think about.  The scent of Scotch tape brings me back to every birthday I ever had growing up.  Since my birthday is in the spring it’s like all smells were dormant in the winter and started to thaw and awaken leaving their little scent prints everywhere.  The smell after a nice warm rain brings me back to trying to save all of the worms that squirmed out of the ground during the rains of my youth and how I tried so desperately to save their lives by throwing them back into the rain-soaked ground that they just escaped from.  Recently I bought a spicy warm candle that I’ve kept lit every day.  The smell was familiar but I just couldn’t place it.  Then, it hit me all of a sudden.  It was a smell of happy times.  A smell of future plans.  A smell of fear.

 Back in the eighties, my family frequented Waupaca, Wisconsin every summer for almost the entire summer.  My dad grew up there and rather than leave his childhood behind, he bought his family a summer home there.  Typically we would go there every weekend, but sometimes my mom would pack up us three kids and we would lounge in inner tubes until our lips turned purple.  We would get out of the water long enough to dry off, warm up only to do it again.  After a few days of this, my mom would go stir crazy and would have to get out of the cottage just for a change of scenery.  Everyone’s favorite place to go was The Red Mill.

 Walking into the Red Mill was like walking back in time.  It almost felt like you were walking into someone’s house, and in reality you kind of were since the proprietors of the place lived in the lower level.  First walking in to the mill the smell of all sorts of spiced potpourri wandered up your nostrils making you think someone was brewing hot cider to cut the chill of a fall day even though it was summer outside.  A player piano was usually playing some lilting, romantic music that made me want to be in love.  It didn’t matter if I was only eight, I wanted to be in love and it didn’t matter with whom. 

The mill was filled with different artists crafts and masterpieces begging to be bought.  Mostly the things were made with a jigsaw and were painted bright and country-like with faceless Amish dolls sitting on chairs in the corners.  Brightly colored candy sticks were stored in old fashioned looking jars with exotic sounding names like sassafras and horehound.  If we were good, my mom let us each pick out three sticks on our way out.  I think it was her way of thanking the owners for letting her come in with three unpredictable children and her not making a major purchase. 

 Christmas scenes were everywhere teasing the senses into believing it was snowing outside until you looked out of one of the huge picture windows onto the Crystal River to see that it was sunny and warm outside.  The grounds at the Red Mill were beautifully done with flowers potted in strange things like milk cans and chamber pots.  There was an old outhouse there that was no longer in use but we always thought it was such a scandalous decoration.  Why would someone put a toilet on display? 

 To cross the Crystal River, a beautiful old covered bridge stretched over the small river.  The sound of our footsteps on the old creaky wood always excited us.  Will the bridge break today spilling us into the river today?  Maybe?  No?  Yes?  How fast and hard can we run through this bridge to get Mom’s undies in a huge bundle?  Not so loud and not so fast.

Once through the bridge a tiny little chapel was nestled into the woods.  The chapel was beautiful.  My sister and I would sit in the muggy little building planning our weddings and fighting over who would get married in there first.  It was a fight that we had during every visit.  My mom, who was always tired of listening to us bicker, suggested that we had a double wedding.  Then the fight changed from who was going to get married first, since that had been settled, to who was going to marry Bo and who was going to marry Luke.  Duke that is.  When we got to that fight, we knew that it was time to go.  My mom’s wanderlust had been fulfilled and her nerves were getting shot from listening to the fights.  We would pile back into the station wagon and start crunching our candy sticks not caring that we could never get the last bit of cellophane off because our saliva had dripped into the wrapper making it adhere to the candy permanently. 

 A few years ago I was in Wisconsin for my dad’s wedding, which was held in Waupaca.  My sister and I wanted to share the Red Mill with my daughter so she could experience some of the things we did when we were growing up.  On the ride there we told her of all the wonderful things that she could expect to see like handmade puzzles and old-fashioned craft kits.  We pulled into the parking lot, each taking one of her hands (I guess so we wouldn’t fight about who was going to lead her around) and we went into the wonderland that used to be our favorite childhood store.

 The smell was still the same; the wonderful spiced potpourri hadn’t changed.  The player piano was still in the corner where it had always been but this time it was silent.  Without the player piano the place almost seemed eerie.  A thin layer of dust coated everything in the store like the place hadn’t been properly cleaned in months.  My sister and I figured that the owners were just getting old and were having trouble keeping up with the place so we did our best to try to look past it.

 We took my daughter through the shop pointing out all of the still unique items that were for sale.  We planned on buying her candy sticks like how we used to get when we were kids.  When we got to the display of candy we saw the even the candy had been left to go to ruins.  The wrappers of the candy were already stuck to the sticks as though someone had tried sucking the candy through the cellophane.  My sister and I gave each other a look that said we weren’t going to buy that candy.  We took my daughter’s hands again and told her we were going to go see the chapel.  When we turned around, a man with horn-rimmed glasses and a thread bare shirt from the ‘50’s was standing right behind us.  We hadn’t noticed him at all since the store was empty and typically the store clerk was only at the front of the store by the door waiting to check people out.

 “My parents owned this place for years,” the man said.  “But they died recently.  Both of them.”  My sister and I expressed our condolences.  “Famous people have been here before, wanna see their pictures?”  My sister and I looked at each other again.  We thought we would be nice since the man had just lost his parents.  We followed the man to the front of the store where he opened a door that I had always assumed was a closet.  It turned out it was his living quarters.  My daughter saw something that interested her and bolted through the door before we could grab her and leave.  I went into the living quarters first to try to get my daughter out.  The man held the door for my sister and gestured for her to go in.  Slowly, she followed.  The door shut behind us.  We heard the lock click.

 I looked around the living quarters, which were in complete disarray.  There were news papers everywhere, not stacked up left undone as though they had been read and just left for someone else to pick them up.  The man came into his home and pulled a large leather bound photo album off a shelf.  “This is my father’s old shirt,” he told us with a smile that wasn’t meant to be friendly.  “This place is mine now.  It’s all mine.”  The man started flipping through the photo album expecting us to pay attention to each page.  We shifted our weight from foot to foot getting more uncomfortable at each page of the book.  The man reminded us of someone who was either deep in mourning at the loss of his parents or someone who had caused the death of them. 

 When the man offered to make us a snack we accepted.  We saw this as a way out of the place.  As soon as the man turned his back to us, I bent down and picked up my daughter and my sister clasped her hand over my daughter’s little mouth.  Together we worked our way through the mess of the apartment trying not to step on any papers that would make a crinkling sound.  The dead bolt gave a loud satisfying click as we turned it towards freedom.  As soon as we were through the threshold we ran to our car.  I practically tossed my daughter into the back seat and commanded her to buckle up as my sister started the engine.  As I was getting into the car, the man appeared at the door of the Red Mill with a knife in his hand.  Maybe the knife was meant for us.  Maybe we had just escaped our deaths.  Maybe he was just going to cut open a bagel.  I don’t know.  I don’t care.  Maybe I was rude.  But I’m still alive.